My plan for this card in M10 design was to have a mirrored pair of “Good Priest” / “Evil Priestess”, 1/1 creatures for and that had “: Target player gains 1 life” and “: Target player loses 1 life” respectively. Once we decided to put Soul Warden at common (as opposed to uncommon like it was in Tenth Edition and Ninth Edition), however, the white one no longer fit in the set. But we kept the black one.

Development messed with the numbers, putting mana in the activation, which I’m actually a big fan of. Cards without mana on them, like Onyx Goblet, give you a turn ultimatum—“I’m at 6 life; I am almost certainly dead in six turns”—but the mana activation on the Acolyte means you can buy yourself turns by forcing your opponent to spend his mana doing something else.

The card is “bad” from a pure power perspective, but I have no regrets about p... (see all)